Okay, maybe his doesn't quite go that far. But when you end a lengthy and detailed article, summarizing much political science research with numerous well chosen examples (though my friend David Salmanson is perhaps rightly complaining to me via e-mail about Fukuyama's treatment of the U.S. Forest Service), with "The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action," the headline of Damon's column--"America is Doomed!"--seems justified. Given my rather odd and radical mix of political preferences--Christian socialism, local community, populist economics, a decentralized and quasi-anarchic egalitarianism, etc.--it's not surprising that I'm quite open to root-and-branch condemnations of the liberal constitutionalism which defines our political order (though it was really only within that past fewyears that my despair with our particular approach to democratic government really began to flourish), and I recognize that general narratives of decline are a dime-a-dozen and deserve to be treated skeptically. Still, I think overall Fukuyama has thoughtfully and measuredly nailed our institutionally decay. Perhaps there is much more that could be said about the civic, moral, and structural roots of that decay, but in terms of proximate causes, it really is, as Damon commented to me, a tour-de-force.

So, in other words, you all should read it, and think about it. To whet your appetites (or perhaps to serve the needs of those who are curious but don't have a spare half-hour or so), let me summarize some of his main points by reconstructing them in a step-by-step, historical fashion:

1) The constitutional arrangement of the United States ended up--in part by building guarantees of individual rights, guarantees which came to be the interpretive prerogative of the judicial branch, into our fundamental law right from the beginning--enabling (or, at least, given the ideological backwash of the Revolution, legitimizing) a rise in a demand for political and economic democracy long before an administrative state capable of delivering of the democratic wishes of the people was established.

2) Consequently, through the 19th century political parties became the primarily deliverer of democratically demanded prizes--and as the country grew in size and complexity, this political and economic patronage became increasing corrupt, with locally elected representatives and locally elected or appointed judges enjoying enormous patronage resources.

3) The Progressive era was thus much more than simply cleaning up and regulating political parties and elections; it was also creating a set of expectations for administrative agencies--ones that reflected a late 19th-century/early 20th-century devotion to science and organization--that presented them as capable bearers of the public trust distinct from the buying and patronizing of political influence. Ideally, while these agencies would be subject to ultimate legislative (and thus democratic) oversight, they would be kept free from invasive and debilitating interest group interference.

4) Unfortunately, over the long haul, both our particular (separation of powers) constitutional arrangement and our particular (first-past-the-post) electoral system made it in the interest of elected representatives to seek the support of specific interest groups beyond the official agenda of their parties, and our individualism pushed against the regulations that had prevented the development of a hugely expensive campaign finance system which made such support necessary for the success of any individual politician. The combination of these made the ability of administrative agencies to remain free from the legislative veto-points that proliferated in our federal government--or even the desire of those working in said agencies to stay above them--rather negligible.

5) As a result, the judiciary became increasingly responsible for, and then eventually invested in, resolving disputes and issuing rules to patch over both the inability or unwillingness of our legislative bodies to effectively act on political consensus, and the incoherence of the dictates handed out to administrative agencies by a divided and interfering legislature. An executive which regularly took up authority that the legislative branch couldn't or wouldn't make use of, and issued executive orders which often tested the boundaries of its enumerated powers, giving the legislature and interest groups additional things to fight about, didn't help.

6) All this, of course, decreased the trust in and prestige of government, meaning that increasingly the purported meritocracy of the civil service didn't work, as the best and the brightest went elsewhere.

7) Lather, rinse, repeat. Or, as Fukuyama writes near his conclusion:

[T]he United States is trapped by its political institutions. Because Americans distrust government, they are generally unwilling to delegate to it the authority to make decisions, as happens in other democracies. Instead, Congress mandates complex rules that reduce the government’s autonomy and cause decision-making to be slow and expensive. The government then doesn’t perform well, which confirms people’s lack of trust in it. Under these circumstances, they are reluctant to pay higher taxes, which they feel the government will simply waste. But without appropriate resources, the government can’t function properly, again creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How to get out of this? I don't know. Some aim to overturn Citizens United and re-install some strong limits on the ability of powerful individuals and corporations to dictate where the incentives governing the decisions of our elected representatives lie. But frankly, I have little hope for that. But assuming that or some other such reform does work, what would keep the whole process from simply starting up again? Probably, I think, it would have to involve creating a more parliamentary set of institutions, meaning a wholesale change in our Constitution. Again, not something I'm holding our much hope for. See what I mean about despair?

2 comments:

I'm happy to know volume 2 of Political Order is finally out. I don't read many poli-sci books but the first one was fascinating. Sounds like the second one might be more depressing, though.

I was interested in his passing comment in this article that Americans have grown accustomed to achieving things like racial justice through the courts, while other countries have achieved similar things through other branches of government. Seems like a crucial point because a lot of American progressives don't seem to believe the general public would ever have stopped being white supremacist on its own, which has led to some frankly illiberal sentiments about a lot of issues. What was really analogous in Europe or elsewhere to integrating descendants of slaves into a modern state? I mean, there was the end of serfdom, but that was a while before states became 'modern,' I would think.

Thanks for reading, Camassia. As for your question, I agree that his comment about Brown v. Board of Education was very revealing--and what he didn't mention (and I'm surprised that he didn't, because it directly supports his Hamiltonian point about the importance of an energetic and responsible executive) was President Truman's order to integrate the American military. You ask about the non-judicial "integrating [of] the descendents of slaves into a modern state," and that strikes me as a perfect example. In this particular case, you had a (for the U.S., perhaps rare) example of a mostly well-operating, mostly apolitical governing institution--the U.S. military--whose administrative head--the U.S. president--clearly had the efficient authority to make and follow up on this order. It required some forced retirements of top brass and further orders along the way, but it's undeniable that the military, after two generations of living under this order, is probably the most integrated and least racially troubled part of the whole United States. Certainly it's much better off than the judicially managed integration of public schools. Sure, one could say that this is apples and oranges; I wouldn't want my kid's public schools run top-down like the military. Still, it's a supporting point for his whole general argument that sometimes the best way to reflect democratic principles and implement consensus is through effective administrative orders, rather than constantly appealed court cases.

Quotes

"Every one of the standards according to which action is condemned demands action. Although the dignity of persons is inevitably violated in action, this dignity would be far less recognized in the world than it is had it not been supported by actions such as the establishment of constitutions and the fighting of wars in defense of human rights. Action must be untruthful, yet religion, science, philosophy, and the arts, the main forms of absolute fidelity to the truth, could not survive were they unsupported by action. Action cannot but be anticommunal in some measure, yet communal relationships would be almost nonexistent without areas of peace and order, which are created by action. We must act hesitantly and regretfully, then, but still we must act."

(Glenn Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity: The Prophetic Stance [HarperSanFrancisco, 1991], 215)

"[T]he press was still the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism....The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a cheap boarding-school; but it was still the nearest approach to a career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education."

"Mailer was a Left Conservative. So he had his own point of view. To himself he would suggest that he tried to think in the style of [Karl] Marx in order to attain certain values suggested by Edmund Burke."

(Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night [The New American Library, 1968], 185)

"All those rely on their hands, and each is skillful at his own craft. / Without them a city would have no inhabitants; no settlers or travellers would come to it. / Yet they are not in demand at public discussions, nor do they attain to high office in the assembly. They do not sit on the judge's bench or understand the decisions of the courts. They cannot expound moral or legal principles and are not ready with maxims. / But they maintain the fabric of this world, and the practice of their craft is their prayer."

(Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 38:31-34, in The Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha [Oxford University Press, 1989])

"The tendency, which is too common in these days, for young men to get a smattering of education and then think themselves unsuited for mechanical or other laborious pursuits is one that should not be allowed to grow up among us...Every one should make it a matter of pride to be a producer, and not a consumer alone."

(Wilford Woodruff, Millennial Star [November 14, 1887], 773)

"We are parts of the world; no one of us is an isolated world-whole. We are human beings, conceived in the body of a mother, and as we stepped into the larger world, we found ourselves immediately knotted to a universe with the thousand bands of our senses, our needs and our drives, from which no speculative reason can separate itself."

"'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'"

(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol [Candlewick Press, 2006], 35)

"The Master said, 'At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning; at thirty, I took my place in society; at forty, I became free of doubts; at fifty, I understood Heaven's Mandate; at sixty, my ear was attuned; and at seventy, I could follow my heart's desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety.'"

"Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundations of their theories, principles which admit a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations."

"[God] does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. . . . His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him."

"Money is simply a tool. We use money as a proxy for our time and labor--our life energy--to acquire things that we cannot (or care not to) procure or produce with our own hands. Beyond that, it has limited actual utility: you can't eat it; if you bury it in the ground, it will not produce a crop to sustain a family; it would make a lousy roof and a poor blanket. To base our understanding of economy simply on money overlooks all other methods of exchange that can empower communities. Equating an economy only with money assumes there are no other means by which we can provide food for our bellies, a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs."

"A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma."

"I believe in democracy. I accept it. I will faithfully serve and defend it. I believe in it because it appears to me the inevitable consequence of what has gone before it. Democracy asserts the fact the masses are now raised to a higher intelligence than formerly. All our civilization aims at this mark. We want to do what we can to help it. I myself want to see the result. I grant that it is an experiment, but it is the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; the only conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only result that is worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is backward, and I do not care to repeat the past. I am glad to see society grapple with issues in which no one can afford to be neutral."